Support hunting license hike
I honestly don’t know where people who are opposing the hunting license fee increase get that the majority of the hunters in 2C are against the current policy of deer management. Yes, maybe they were at the onset of this policy, due to not understanding what is happening or what the purpose of the policy is. Even I was guilty of attacking it and not accepting it at first. But over the past two years, I have taken special interest in all of this and especially the 2C Wildlife Management Unit. I have recently spoken to many groups of hunters, large and small, in sportsman’s clubs and while hunting.
My own findings were that the majority does currently support it. What I did find interesting was that most of the sportsmen that I talked to that have accepted the policy and had small issues with it; most notable is that they thought the entire state was still in herd reduction. It is not.
The current plan is herd stabilization, with the exception of two WMUs. The only things that they complained about were small pieces that most of us have mentioned previously and what the Pennsylvania Game Commission is currently working on. Nothing drastic.
Nobody spends more time in the woods of 2C than I, and I take offense to people who claim to speak for the majority of us. That’s simply false.
I think we all agree that the license increase is a must if we want to keep hunting in Pennsylvania a longstanding tradition and part of our children’s future. The PGC cannot stay afloat with a 1999 budget; I couldn’t do it and I wouldn’t be afraid to say that anybody could.
I hear people complaining all the time about ammo increasing in costs, guns increasing in costs, milk increases, beef increases, and land taxes increasing for that matter. It all boils down to needing more money, doesn’t it?
Didn’t Pennsylvanians just get the minimum wage increase of $2 an hour? That translates to $80 a week in most folks’ pocketbooks, minus taxes. Didn’t a lot of people just get a cost-of-living increase? Not for the PGC.
They didn’t get anything. Without an increase, rest assured, there will be more cuts in the future and it will inevitably be “the sportsmen” of Pennsylvania’s cost.
The amount of the increase asked for in the petition is another $15 a year. That brings the price of a general hunting license to $3. When you divide it by hunting opportunity days, the cost is a little less than 10 cents a day. I don’t see how hunters can afford to not support the increase.
We are losing way too much education on many matters here. Heck, at this moment in time, the PGC can’t even afford to educate us and recruit new hunters and trappers.
The increase would allow for more hunter safety courses, maybe bring the Pennsylvania Game News back to the schools, allow for areas without wildlife conservation officer coverage to be covered finally.
The list could go on forever; that’s not a good thing, that’s a shame. It shouldn’t be.
But it’s not the PGC’s fault. It’s ours, the sportsmen who have had it so good for so many years. It’s time to stop being greedy and give back to what has been given to us in the end. Give them the increase.
Robert Gratson
Dunbar